Many times a week, I get asked about “getting to the top of google” and I always find it a nightmare of a topic to explain to a client without them looking confused and baffled by the end and saying “meta what?”.
So how does everyone else approch this topic to a client?
We have the same problem. Our clients know little about SEO thingy. They always demand for a development in terms of keywords in just a period of month and we always give some scenario with a very detailed explanation to let them know that competition are always in between the process. Its quite hard to dictate clients demand only if you give them a clue on what’s going on the world of SEO.
Why would you be mentioning meta anything?
I usually give them a run down of why links matter and the fact that it’s long term and fluid and leave it at that.
A few of my clients have already looked on these ‘get to the top of google fast’ sites or have been to a marketing seminar and heard the words meta tags… it seems to be the only word they do remember, so at times it is impossible to avoid the word meta.
There is no other way than explaining clearly about our process to client. Then only v can get full coops from clients.
The problem with that is by the end, they are still confused!
you can firstly tell your clients about purpose of SEO, then tell them about the seo procedure, such as keyword research, how spiders crawl their sites, site optimization, link building and tracking and monitoring. detailed information such as meta tags, alt tags and how to write a headline.
;)
Hi,
I faced same problem some times but i give some SEO tutorial url for detail. And say our clients to check result and position only for his keywords.
But i agree with all that some clients if he dont know more about SEO then its a bit tough work to let him know all procedure.
Thanks 
I also got a similar problem before. You just make it clear and use terms that are common. I just explained it to our clients before by comparing it to an offline store (book store, pharmacy, etc.). If you have lots of posters everywhere or stickers on vehicles whatever, these can be considered as backlinks.
Sounds kinda nuts but that works great for me explaining it to them. Hope I got a point in here and helped. 
LOL I never find myself explaining “Meta what?” because meta elements (meta description and meta keywords) have zero affect on Google rankings. There are VERY few engines that even look at these from a ranking perspective. The meta description is still important since it is often displayed as the snippet in the SERPs, but other than that… meta elements don’t affect SEO. And please, don’t say, “What about the title tag?” The <title> “element” is NOT a “meta” element. If it doesn’t start with “<meta” then it “ain’t” a meta element.
When they want to know what it takes to get to the top of Google for some keyword phrase, I sit them down at a browser, have them search for that keyword phrase… copy the top 10 URLs into a spreadsheet… go to Yahoo! and have them do LINK:URL commands for each URL from the top 10. And I tell them that it’s going to take that roughly many links from that many and equivalent authoritative and trusted sites to compete since inbound links from other sites ARE the #1 influencer of rankings at all of the major engines.
I then have them perform searches for intitle:“keyword phrase”, inurl:“keyword phrase”, intitle:“keyword phrase” inurl:“keyword phrase” to show them how many other web sites have EXACTLY that keyword phrase in the <title>, URL, and BOTH the <title> and URL so they get a good idea of how competitive the terms are.
Seeing is believing… A picture is worth 1000 words… It doesn’t take too many times of doing this before they start to get the “real” picture of how hard your job is…
tell them the importance of SEO and necessity of it.
you can tell them the benifits SEO can bring, more potential customers, more orders.In a word, SEO is one of the cheapest and most effective ways to get potential customers.
after all, if they know all about SEO, there is no need for you to do this. I think so.
As soon as you receive project from the client, you analyze the status of the website.
And find the best suitable keywords for the client. Estimate when the target can be reached considering the Page Rank, Traffic Rank, Backlinks, Onpage factors, search competition for the keyword, etc.
Then reply the client regarding this.
Just try and keep it as simple as you can. Don’t explain anything technical. Just tell them what you can do for them. Take their site and show them how much traffic you can bring them. Leave out the specs.
I tell all of them the exact same thing and it works like a charm.
“If you want your kids to admit you are their parent again you need to get this SEO junk handled, Ok?”
…well I thought it was funny, but I did make it over to happy hour earlier.